THE ICE MEN COMETH

McGinn hopes freezing cold baths can help give tired Hibs the edge in battle with Bairns

TOMORROW night at Easter Road, the combination of freezing cold baths and enforced rest periods may just give Hibernian a fighting chance of overcoming the crippling fatigue built into this cruel play-off format.

Until they learn to play with ice in their veins, however, their chances of securing an ever more arduous end-of-season programme may be likened to those of a snowball mistakenly tossed into the burning fires of hell.

Football skills and clever players they boast in abundance. Steely-eyed missile men capable of unblinkingly, unflinchingly, unforgivingly putting rivals down without a hint of a tremor? We’ll get back to you.

Because, as well as Alan Stubbs’ men performed for much of Saturday’s quarter-final win at home to Raith Rovers, the fact that their fans were left without an un-mangled fingernail between them revealed much.

They made hard work of getting past a club with one-tenth of their spending power — despite scoring twice in the opening 12 minutes to overturn their 1-0 midweek loss in Kirkcaldy.

Credit them for getting the job done, certainly. Especially when you consider some of the obvious leg-weariness afflicting so many over the closing half hour.

But anyone who felt the anxiety hanging thick in the air from about 60 minutes onwards, the frustration that caused Jason Cummings to become the target of criticism from home fans, the palpable terror that struck any time the visitors put a ball into the box, has to accept that Hibs retain the potential for spectacular and self-inflicted implosion.

Falkirk, who came from 2-0 down to pinch a point on their last visit to Easter Road, will make the short journey to face a team hobbled by a farcically abbreviated turnaround — and labouring to shed an occasionally unfair reputation for wobbling under pressure.

Leaving that unwinnable — well, a promotion and Scottish Cup double would probably end all debate — argument over bottle and nerve to one side, Stubbs faces a pretty obvious threat tomorrow night.

Yes, he has a big squad. But, in games that mean so much, it would be wrong if he did not keep going back to his best players time and again. At least until they can no longer put one foot in front of the other.

If selected to face Falkirk at home, John McGinn will be playing his 50th game of the season. Even for a 21-year-old bursting with energy, that sounds pretty daunting.

The Scotland midfielder, who opened the scoring on Saturday thanks to a wildly fortunate deflection on his shot after just eight minutes, argues that he would rather be playing than sitting around twiddling his thumbs.

‘Last year, according to the boys who were here, it was actually a bit strange for them waiting to get involved in the play-offs,’ he said. ‘I would rather be playing than sitting waiting for a game. And I’m 21, I can’t really complain about feeling tired!

‘We were in an ice bath right after the game. It’s freezing, obviously. But it all counts. If it gives us that extra two per cent on Tuesday night, it’ll be worth it. We need all the rest and recovery we can get.

‘There are a few obvious candidates when it comes to complaining about the ice bath. You could probably have a guess at the prime culprits. But it’s a team game, so nobody gets to miss out. If one of us is in, we’re all in. ‘The manager is quite strict about our down time, too. I’ve missed my golf this year. Basically life is just going into training, then going home to rest and recover, getting enough sleep. ‘So the gaffer is quite strict because he knows how important these games are. ‘Adrenaline is important. It’s been a long, hard season. But we can all see the prize at the end of it — and we all know it’s worth the effort. ‘We just need to try to be as fresh as we can. If we can play the way we did in the first half hour against Raith, we’ve got a chance of going all the way.’ Hibs dominated the game for that opening spell, with Darren McGregor’s 12th-minute header from a corner setting them up for a procession. With all four midfielders looking very comfortable on the ball, both full-backs could push forward, meaning Raith were penned in. When Ryan Hardie was thwarted one-on-one by cult hero keeper Conrad Logan after 35 minutes, though, the whole stadium seemed to catch a bad case of the jitters. From that moment on, with Rovers increasingly adventurous, it seemed as if both teams were playing a game of ‘next goal the winner’.

Cummings over-thought too many opportunities, an unusual criticism of such an instinctive striker, and numerous chances for Hibs to break seemed to fizzle out in the face of solid defending.

With midweek goal hero Harry Panayiotou, Joel Thomas and Mark Stewart all thrown on to give the visitors a front three for the final 25 minutes, there were half-chances for Raith. Had they taken just one to square up the tie, few would have bet on Hibs recovering.

But Hibernian are the team through to the semi-finals. At the end of a brutalising season, a campaign that has been hard fought every step of the way, they earned the right to move on.

‘I don’t think there were any nerves,’ insisted McGinn. ‘You are at a big club. In this situation, you are going to feel nerves from the crowd. But that’s when you have to puff your chest out and be big enough to deal with it.’